Portsmouth-based Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dauntless heads into maintenance - how long for
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A Royal Navy destroyer is heading into maintenance after linking up with the French Carrier Strike Group.
Portsmouth-based Type 45 destroyer HMS Dauntless will be on the side-lines for three months. A social media statement said this was to make sure the warship was fully prepared for future operations.
“Excellent news: HMS Dauntless & BAE Systems meeting signals start of 3-month support period to return her to full operational capability,” it said. “The Warship of Choice getting the care she deserves.”
It has been an eventful week for the ship’s company. They were invited to Number 10 Downing Street at the request of prime minister Sir Keir Starmer - thanked for their efforts on the eight-month Indo-Pacific deployment alongside HMS Prince of Wales last year.
HMS Dauntless’ maintenance period means the Royal Navy currently only has one destroyer, HMS Duncan, as its disposal. HMS Daring will be back at sea at some point this year after an eight-plus year layoff, with HMS Diamond and HMS Defender also undergoing Power Improvement Project upgrades to fix longstanding problems with their engines and make other enhancements. HMS Dragon is in a short term maintenance period.
This spell with the engineers will prove fruitful for HMS Dauntless. Full operational capability means all designated units and systems on a warship are available and all mission requirements can be met. This allows the Royal Navy to deploy her in several different scenarios.
She played a vital air defence role when she joined up with the French Carrier Strike Group and the country’s huge carrier FS Charles de Gaulle.
Operations room supervisor LS(AWT) Tom Foley previously said: “It’s been an interesting experience working with the Charles de Gaulle task group. The team and I particularly enjoyed the war at sea exercise as it allowed us to be adaptive and tactical in how we were going to find and defeat the enemy. It being more free-play made it different from most exercises I’ve done before.”